Campaign Finance Rules ChangedFollow

Goddamn activist justices.

How is it transparent? The ruling specifically states that they will not be required to identify contributors.

Hmm, everyone in this thread is rated Excellent. If my degree in premature statistical modeling is worth anything, that indicates that posting in this thread will further my quest to become a sage. But what seemingly relevant thing do I say?

Just what the rich need, more power. Plutocracy is a hellish thing.

Curious how much will actually change in practice.

I've always beena supporter of allowing corporations to donate. However, I feel they should be limited in the monetary amount. And I don't mean something like $200,000 limit, but $5,000-10,000.

Pretending that you are aware of how things work for a moment, please tell me how that would help the US economy?

Because it's "fair"? Just a wild guess...

The larger issue, and what I'm going to assume was the motivation for this change, has been the rise of relatively inexpensive communications over the last few decades. The original restriction against large money organizations directly involving themselves in political advertising was to prevent media blitzing right up to the day of the election. Today, that's happening anyway. It's just being done on the internet, and/or being funded by private organizations which don't fit into the criteria of the previous rules. The ability of a wealthy individual (or a group of just semi wealthy, or a large group of average joes) to get massive amounts of opinion messaging out there in front of voters is much greater today than it was 30 years ago.


The rise of well funded organizations which no purpose other than to affect the outcomes of elections has made the restrictions seem silly. Either you have to find a way to apply them to everyone (which has first amendment implications), or you let everyone have the same right to political speech.

I think the rise in the number of people who believe everything they see on the internet has made that somewhat of a moot point. Don't you agree?

And so the solution to this is to throw open the floodgates and let the institutions spend limitless bags of money for their interests? That's just throwing fuel on the fire.



Everyone does have the same right to political speech. However, corporations and unions are not people, they are abstract entities and should be treated as such. Let the individuals of the institutions say and spend how they want, just like regular citizens.

I don't think you have a very good sense of the pulse of the internet. Or society for that matter.

Well, the sheer mass availability of the Internet to every illiterate fool makes this true. Many bored housewives and teenage thuggees don't know enough to pass over all the scams, fraud and misinformation that's being pumped these days. And the reverse is true, too - now any shmuck can set up a legitimate-looking website for $25 and push anything they want. It's a lot more prevalent than it was ten years ago, though the trend may be in the process of changing as the new Internet generation is reaching puberty.